Serious illnesses can be debilitating. They often take months, if not years, to physically recover, and even longer if you consider the emotional and mental toll. In this month’s student spotlight, we will meet one inspiring woman who used ballroom dancing as a way to recover from her serious illness and developed a passion for it.
Susan Ma competes Pro-Am with her instructor, Lukas Spisak
Meet Susan Ma. Seven years ago, she was struggling to recover from a debilitating illness that left her overweight and exhausted. For her entire life, she had loved the beauty of ballroom dancing, and even danced when she was younger. As time went on and she married and had children, she gave up dancing to focus on her career and family life. Then the illness struck.
After her recovery, she knew she had to do something to get herself back into shape. That was when her lifelong love of ballroom dancing bubbled once more to the surface.
“The original thought was to lose weight,” she said, but “the more I learned, the more I fell in love with it.”
At first she danced socially with her husband, Bill. Eventually they decided to dance separately with their teachers. They, like many husband and wife teams in ballroom dancing, found that they argued too much on the dance floor.
“Dancing with my husband makes me feel more stressed and I can’t show my best,” Susan admitted. “We fight a lot during dancing.”
Don’t worry, Susan, you’re not the only one! But happily, Susan and Bill quickly found a way to make it work. While they do take some group classes together, and the skills they’ve acquired allows them to dance together at parties and other social events, they’ve found that they really enjoy dancing with their teachers. Susan, in particular, has found great success in pro-am competitions.
“During pro-am dancing,” she explained, “I feel more relaxed, more enjoyable. I can exert so much more with the pro’s lead.”
For her, the balance between competition dancing and the casual atmosphere of the studio is paramount. “My favorite part of dancing in the studio is how relaxed [I am].” But she adds that, in her opinion, competition is important. “Competition dancing lets me know in which areas I need to improve,” she said, “and it makes me get out of my comfort zone.”
Gold medals for Susan Ma!
She has been doing great in her recent competitions! In May, after an 18 month break forced upon her by the COVID-19 pandemic, she and her instructor Lukas Spisak competed at the Emerald Ball in Dallas, TX. Her first competition back didn’t give her the results she wanted, so she hit the practice floor and trained, trained, trained! Well, all of that training certainly paid off. A month later, she and Lukas travelled to Chicago where she swept those gold medals up! She placed first in both the Three-Dance and the Five-Dance Championships and Scholarships! Susan was ecstatic to be back on the competition floor.
“I felt myself improve a lot in both Standard and Latin style during the pandemic,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “Thank you for my teacher Lukas’s patience and hard work on the fundamental base.”
Susan is a strong advocate for pro-am dancing, whether or not your goal is to compete. The one-on-one attention is what she credits most for her spectacular improvement. “If financially allowed,” she suggested, “we should all dance with pros [one on one] during our learning periods.”
We asked Susan what her goals are in dancing.
“I would like to dance to Open Level in Standard and Gold Level in Latin,” she said. But “having a good foundation is the key to improve. I see a lot of dancers try to move up very fast, but their dancing is unstable.” Adding in a bit of advice for dancers who are just getting started on their path, she continued, “You may feel slow at the very beginning, but dance needs time to understand and practice it. Once you build up your foundation, you will find it much easier when you move up to the higher levels…. Be patient and practice more.”
We couldn’t agree more! And Susan does practice a lot. Come in on a weekday evening and you are sure to see Susan sweating it out on the dance floor. Her commitment to dance and her story are so inspiring, we hope her story will encourage others to get out there on the dance floor and dance to the betterment of their health, just like Susan did.
As for her favorite dance? “Waltz and Rumba,” she confessed.
Good choices!
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